blackmail. >> high crimes against the very structure of our constitutional state. >> the nixon team receives an overwhelming mandate from the american voters sweeping every state but one, massachusetts. >> as a result of the cover-up, richard nixon stayed in office a lot longer than he should have, but imagine if the american people had known in the summer of 1972 the extent to which richard nixon had participated in criminal enterprises. >> it's not just a desire for political power. it's a lust. i mean, that's what nixon said. i lust for power. >> the man in the middle in the watergate scandal. it's 34-year-old john wesley dean iii. >> i thought the cover-up was going to end after the election. i was wrong. >> i had no prior knowledge of the watergate break-in. >> it's going to get worse, much worse. >> seven men went on trial today in a washington federal court charged with the break-in and burglary of democratic national headquarters in the water building last june. >> the white house managed to contain the break-in at the watergate to only seven people, but john siricca knew that people had lied in this court and it pissed him off so what he wanted to do was to find out if there was anybody above those seven who should be going to jail, and he thought the only way for that to happen would be to give them tough sentences. >> as white house counsel, i was the desk officer of the cover-up. i get the information and gather it, and then i share it with the people who need to know. one of the things i suggest to the president is that it's very likely that the cover-up is going to blow. i don't know who is going to go, who is going to blow up, i tell him mccord, for example. mccord was worried. >> mccord decides he's going to blow the whistle. >> this was supposed to be the finale for the seven watergate defenders the day of sentencing but instead the case broke wide open again. >> mccord wrote judge siricca a letter. he said other people not yet named were involved in the break-in in the democratic national headquarters. he said political pressure was brought on defendants to plead guilty and remain silent. he says there was perjury in the trial testimony. >> the letter he released in siricca's courtroom was his last-ditch effort after being convicted. >> he didn't know that much, but he knew enough to know that it went hour hand that the trial was a fiasco. >> the mccord letter was the first real indication that we had that maybe this thing went high up in both the campaign and perhaps the nixon administration. >> watergate was really a non-issue with the public. it wasn't a campaign issue. it was a big story in "the washington post" when they could find something but most of the rest of the national press was paying no attention up until mccord's letter. >> i mean, he didn't say nixon himself was involved. he just brought it into the white house. >> nixon called me and said what you predicted that somebody was going to blow certainly appears to have happened, and i said i'm not surprised, but i said it's obviously not good. he said, well, why don't you go up to camp david and collect your thoughts about how we deal with it. you know, i said i'll talk to my wife. i think it's probably a good idea. but when i arrive up there, haldeman calls me and said, john, while you're at camp david, why don't you write the dean report. this was another attempt to get me to write a bogus dean report. way back in august 29th of the preceding year nixon implied that i had written a report or given him a report. i never even talked to the man about it. >> counsel to the president mr. dean, his investigation indicates that no one in the white house staff, no one in this administration presently employed was involved in this very bizarre incident. >> the problem is they didn't want an honest report. they wanted a report that would make everything go away and be hunky-dory and those would be a lie. this is something we can't do, can't be done unless you do a fraud. i think that haldeman had been sort of sent out to test me and see where my loyalties might fall. he wasn't sure i could be loyal to richard nixon, and this was something that was very important to them, that there be blind loyalty to nixon that, you know, whatever nixon said was the final word. >> the unconditional loyalty is how people maintain their hold, and we see this in a lot of different contexts. we see it in authoritarian regimes. we see it in organized crime. we see it in cult. it's a powerful control mechanism that helps enable corruption and misconduct. >> deep in the middle of all this at camp david, the "l.a. times" issues a story based on jim mccord's talking to his neighbor who is an "l.a. times" reporter that i had somehow been involved in the planning of watergate. >> the the "los angeles times" without disclosing its source said mccord named white house lawyer john dean and deputy campaign director jeff mcgruder as having advanced knowledge of the operation. >> the story in the "l.a. times" were defamiliar trip. i certainly hadn't, as mccord has suggested, ordered the watergate break, but after the arrest i had gotten increasingly involved, and i had become a target. while i'm at camp david, it's really the first time that i'm out of the daily line of fire, and i had mo with me. i'm up there with my wife, and so we took long walks in the woods. i very clearly remember what dawned on me that i would have to live with the cover-up the rest of my life. that would have been frightening to me to try to pull that off. i just got married. it's going to ruin my life. i'm convinced the moment is here. we've got to end this. 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mild don't wait, get tested quickly. if you test positive and are at high risk for severe disease, act fast ask if an oral treatment is right for you. covid-19 moves fast and now you can too. >> when i got back to the white house, i'm convinced we've got toned the cover-up. >> secret and lies are far too common in politics, and i have from my experience learned in the long run they don't work. the truth has its own way of coming out and will come out. the weekend of april 14, 15, 1973 is when the watergate cover-up imploded. i had talked to hauledman and ehrlichman, the fact that i thought we were breaking the law and i showed particularly ehrlichman being had a lawyer the stat tuite that was involved hand why i thought we were violating it. he said i disagree, john. i have no which will intent so i didn't vie hate these statutes. >> i can't believe that had a man who went to law school had to miss school the day they talked about criminal intent. also decided i really needed a israel lawyer who was a former assistant attorney in new york and now primarily a defense attorney. i asked him to come no my office to figure out who has done what and who has done what exposure, and it it was mcgruder, mitchell, haldeman and ehrlichman and yours truly. i tried to take that list to haldeman and indicate that we're all in trouble. be very careful once the tube is out of the tube. it's very hard to get black. >> on april 157 i meet with the president at 9:00 p.m. that night. he's in hickstive chair in the executive office billing. he is smoking a cigar and i offer me a thing to and i said no changes. i want the president to solve this. i'm not trying to set him up. i think his aides have il-served him. it was an unusual conversation. he had a yellow pad in his lap, and he took me through a bunch of leading questions like do you remember the conversation with had by paying these guys off and i told him that at a point where i was just joking. >> nixon got up at one point and went over to the corner of his office which struck me as odd and then he asked me a question. i spokes to colson about clemency for howard hunt. that could have been obstruction of justice, is that right? they were unlike the normal conversations i've had with him, and i thought at that moment, well, maybe he's recordings. >> i'm stunned and i realized that he indeed is much deeper into this thing that i saw. the next day i was called to the president owes off the. as the door was being opened for me to walk into the oval office, walking out of the opposite side of the oval office and chuckling were highlanderman and ehrlichman. it was up of my more memorable meetings with the president. >> i've drafted somelers and he step esthem across his desk. >> he gave me a blank resignates letter, actually two of them. have i prom. i understood the way the white house worked that people at the top didn't take responsibility but rather blames sub-else, quota scapegoat. it was standard operating procedure. >> i it -- asked about that conversation, i realized xwrf in -- this thing has to end and i'm going to be the one who blows this all up. >> the more they convinced them that together they had to do something which is to more or less make things right, he knew that if that department work he was going to end up in jail. >> i was convinced that we were in a pitched battle where they would try to take me down but involved to solve this problem i'd have to take them down. >> i knew at that time i was blowing up my career, knew future, butty did i sided that i with a create a statement. some may help or think i'llblep -- anybody who knows that don't know the true facts nor understands our system of justice. i'm blakely stating i'm not going to -- i >> the reason that these powerful individuals find someone to scape gate is they need to out themselves because they know the things they have done and they are petrified for that information to come out. the reason they go for loyal individuals like donald went for someone like myself is because he never thought that i would come out and testify against him, to out him, to expose him for the conman, the fraud, the cheat that he legitimacy is, so there's a tremendous similarity between richard nixon and donald trump in that respect. >> dean became a bigger and bigger player until the point where nixon fired him as kind of a sacrificial lamb. >> good evening, the biggest white house scandal in a century broke wide open. the president's white house heel counsel john deep has been fired. >> nixon realized that i was going to blow up the scandal. >> johner ickman, the president's chief domestic adviser has resigned. >> that became a key headline and one of the pivoting points of watergate. >> one of the most difficult decisions of my presidency, i accepted the rigs nations of two of my closest associates in the white house, bob haldeman, john ehrlichman. >> why was the president getting rid of his closest advisers? you have one of two explanations. one, the president was not in control of his own white house, or, two, the president is engaged in damage control and it would be up to congress to figure it out. >> in any organization the man at the top must bear. responsibility. reason, or fun. daring, or thoughtful. sensitive, or strong. progress isn't either or progress is everything. ♪ you know real chili never has beans. you know which pizza is eaten with a fork and a knife... and which one is definitely not. you know a cappuccino is for the morning and an espresso is for the afternoon. you know how to answer "sparking or still" in over 12 different languages. you'll try anything that's not currently alive... unless of course it's highly recommended. the delta skymiles® american express card. if you travel, you know. do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now you can sell your policy - even a term policy - for an immediate cash payment. we thought we had planned carefully for our 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to check that power if we put someone in there that's unwilling to do that. >> you can have a functioning democracy in that kind of situation because democracy requires accountability. >> before i was fired by nixon and then after the time of the watergate burglars, the senate created a select committee to investigate watergate. >> the senate spent much of the day today in an old darn fashioned party line wrangle over the select committee to make a full investigation of the watergate case. >> my name is david dorsen and was the chief assistant count of the watergate committee. the creation of the senate committee followed the "the washington post" or the calls on watergate. it followed the trial before judge sirica. the vote to set up the select committee by the senate was 77-0. sflmp now the country could not vote 77-0 to keep american-of-american flag. there would be some. >> he has to convince the american people that the system is work and if part of the system broke down, another group can come in and make sure that it runs correctly. >> howard baker was the vice chair, senator from tennessee, a conservative republican. >> and the chief counsel of the committee was a fellow named sam dash. he was looking for three people to run the investigations, i had no idea that this was going to go this high. no idea. >> our role is to make close closures and inform the american people through televised hearings. we had the power of subpoena and the power to put people under oat but congress does not have a prosecutorial funk. it's only to investigate, legislate and to inform >> by march 1973 you had the smart select committee pushing for hearings. >> but nixon by and large did not want aides to testify. >> people were very interested in the senate hearings and whether nixon was going to claim executive privilege to keep his top aides from testifying. >> a president can't use executive privilege to shield his own criminal conduct. >> nixon was upped pressure of republicans, and many voters who had voted him in -- the-of-but they were able to increase the pressure on the white house, and so the president waived executive privilege forries goodrich white house officials will testify before the special senate committee investigating the bugging and break-in of democratic national headquarters last june. there was a dramatic change on his previous silence and his refusal to let white house aides testify. >> i was told very early i was looked at as a witness, and he said i think you should get i mount and i'll go to the senate and get it. >> sam dash says that don was will to talk to us. we're not going to deliver to nick that -- and sort of laying out or everything. i took the incident of the bungled break-in. he worked quietly with mow to get enough evidence to immunize me. >> as it became evident through the senate watergate investigation, deep's roll was bigger and bigger and bigger this a he was obviously part. when john dean was getting ready to testify i asked his lawyer and he said, yes, he's going to implicate the president of theouts. he was going to have explosive testimony. 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(burke) we should. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ y. in the spring of 1973 before he was going to be interviewed, before the senate committee, john dean was touted as a great important witness. >> i'm the link and linchpin to the key players. i have no question that i made it to the top of nixon's enemies list. >> many americans said, well, look, he's just a rat. he's just trying to protect himself. he's lying. >> i'm getting death threats and about a week before my testimony i have two marshals with me 24-7. they literally move in the basement of our house and that went on for about 18 months. >> the senate select committee said the hearings be televised because it has a very important role to play in informing the public. >> the very confusion and story of political espionage and eves dropping that has become to be known as watergate today came under the scrutiny of the united states senate. >> the senate hearings, they really result in what they called the summer of watergate. >> every single network shut down its regular programming and broadcast hearings. >> now from our studios in washington. here is abc news correspondent frank reynolds. >> good morning. at this hour a select committee of the united states senate is about to begin public hearings on something called watergate. >> the effect on pop culture is people were following is obsessively. >> mr. liddy had a plan where the leaders would be abducted and detained in a place like mexico and that they would then be returned to this country at the end of the convention. >> i'm going to ask the audience to please refrain from any kind of demonstrations. >> i saw a pop culture develop, and it was just amazing. >> the rule against laughter does not apply in the evening. >> no one has asked me, but would i like to make it clear right now that i had no knowledge whatever of the watergate cover-up. >> well, senator irving became a folk hero, kind of an iconic figure. >> there's nowhere that says the president has the right to suspend the fourth amendment. >> and when irving gottage today, his eyebrows start jumping around and his jaw started churning. >> remember the old days when the television repair man would come to your house and